The brief shows that allowing or forbidding marriage based on the respective sexes of the spouses is blatantly unconstitutional sex discrimination. The brief further shows that sex discrimination has no place in California’s law governing marriage and families, as this state long ago abandoned the notion that spousal rights and duties are set by gender stereotypes.

This brief argues that the equality and individual freedom arguments made against same-sex marriage are precisely the same ones that prevailed in the race-based marriage ban instituted in California until 1948, when the state Supreme Court struck it down in Perez v. Sharp.